do you happen to print on poly poplin material or similar? my main use for either of these printers will be Mainly Wall scrolls, but also do poster, sticker, and banner prints that mainly focus on Quality over speed. im not a large company either, im more of the go to person whos not overseas to that artists go to to get artwork printed on several materials. like Made to order so speed to me doesn't matter one bit for the time being.
Nope. it looks like ultraflexx sells a version that it is latex (And would be resin) printable though.
Few things to note -
I print on SAV 90% of the time - On really cheap media, the media will "Tunnel" a bit if you suck it back in after printing on it. By default the Resin will extend media to the cut channel.. which is 24" away. I tell it not to because I dont want to waste 24" of material everytime I requeue something... For 99% of media, it works good - For banners, and $100 vinyl rolls... the material is heated up and it'll tunnel if it pulls back. BUT on a resin you can print right on the front edge... No 2-3 FT waste like on the latex as a leader. And 99% of what I print will suck back in just fine.
Banner: Prints nice. I do find that if the roll is old... the Latex will print on it better than the R500 does - on our latex ive never experienced banner material being too old to print... On our resin you can see splotches if the rolls been sitting there for a few months untouched. The latex seems to just print over and cover the plasticizer migrations. Not a big deal... most rolls dont sit around for a year. And the tunneling thing - You waste 2 FT at the end of your print... But banner is cheap, so not a big deal.
Paper - I've printed on some paper designed for latex - It worked good. It uses low heat to cure it... The same paper I brought in for Latex, we stopped using it on our latex because it curled and wouldnt lay flat. That was our 560 latex - Since then the 700 came out and uses less heat... We do have a 700, but I never tested it on the 700...so I cant confirm if it'd still curl. My expectation is it wouldnt, but even if it did... I'm sure you can turn down the heat and make it work.
Other quirks...
The whole ejecting 2 FT after every print is annoying. I get it, the cutting channel is 2 FT Below the starting point...so it ejects it for you so you can cut it. But then if you send something else from queue... theres a 2 FT gap! I turned it off as soon as I got the printer.... for 99% of medias its not an issue.
It's loud - If youre in an open space it isnt bad. But the Resin sounds like a jet engine compared to the Latex - It's fans are more like blowers... The thing moves air. I think thats how they get away with using little heat... But it will heat up your shop, or in my case my garage... I have an unheated garage, I can go out in -10C Temps and hit print, and within an hour it's 20C in there. It complains about being too hot in the summer...so I have to open the garage and blow some fans in. So depending on where youre putting it... keep in mind the heat + loudness of the thing. The Latex is probably 1/4 as quiet, and doesnt heat up the room as much.
theres a... glitch? At least I think so. I've formatted and used different PCs, and it keeps happening...so I'm calling it a glitch on the resin and not onyx. If you cancel a queue...the next queue you send will be marked as "complete" and not print. It's weird, and annoying, but not a big deal... unelss your constantly canceling prints. I've learned to just clear my queue and then send the next que... if it insta completes, I re-drag it and hit send again and then it goes.
You're not supposed to print for more than 2 hours at a time - I dont know why... but it wont run a cleaning mid print. So they say to only send 2 hours worth of queue at once, or you risk getting banding... I've run a few full rolls without following their advice, and it worked fine for me. I guess its just to cover their ass incase it does band and you waste 1/3 of a roll? I'm sure it can be changed in a firmware update... I mean, what industrial printer limits you to print for 2 hours, then send another queue, so it can queue up a cleaning? seems ridiculous to me, I dont get why they cant pause mid print and do a cleaning.. I've paused the print for 10+ mins before, came back and started it and it didnt have any issues...so why cant it self clean mid print?!
I think thats it! Tiny quirks. Nothing major / deal breaking to me. I work on both machines, and I hate to say it but I prefer the epson over the latex 9.9/10 times now. We're still having way too many issues with our Latex printer... The 700 has too many drawbacks / bugs in it... I'm hoping their next model takes what the 700 got, and it becomes as stable as the 500 series. I loooove how you can send an onyx queue and it stores it on its hard drive, and you can keep sending and queueing other stuff / other material. I don't see why onyx doesnt let you manage multiple queues... But that feature in the 700 is the best thing to happen to roll printers in a long time, imo!